


Svitz: The Country of Love and/or Miscellaneous Conflicting Interpersonal Emotions

by DesdemonaKaylose



Series: Professional Indescretion [4]
Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: Conrad/Misery, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-26
Updated: 2014-02-26
Packaged: 2018-01-13 19:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1238539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Welcome to the Land of Svitz, ambiguously unearthly realm of romance and rest! Visit us via botched transportation spell or publicly sponsored hell bus! </p>
<p>Now is the time to get away with that special someone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Svitz: The Country of Love and/or Miscellaneous Conflicting Interpersonal Emotions

Three figures stand on a plain. It is both a plain in the physical sense that it is generally what you might classify as a rolling grassland, and a plane in the sense that it qualifies as an area of existence somehow _other_ to all previously experienced planes of existence.

Conrad looks at Worth, who looks at the dead man, who shrugs. A faint echo of chimes carries on the wind, and it’s driving Conrad completely crazy because he _knows_ there are no chimes anywhere within auditory range. If they were, he would _see_ them.

“Well,” Conrad says, after the sound of chimes has tunneled so far into his head that his balance is starting to suffer. “Isn’t this just _peachy_.”

Worth lights himself a cigarette, scowling deeply at the bright pale moon that’s floating huge above them, maybe the width of hand in any direction.

“Thissus why I don’t associate with you assholes,” he says, taking a resentful drag.  “I take one step outta m’ damn office an’ I’m trouncin’ round in goddamn fairy land.”

“We didn’t _ask_ you to come,” Conrad counters, immediately.

“Roit sure, an’ ya could mend that break on Hanna just fine without me,” Worth says, “nah, I see now, I was missin’ the whole perspective.”

“I’d like to remind you for the fifth time tonight that it is in fact a _free_ country, as you like to point out so often.”

“Eh. Ya can bet I’m free ter never do another fuckin’ housecall,” Worth mutters. He’s smoking and grinding his heel into a patch of huge curling blue flowers, like he can’t stand anything attractive standing unabused in his presence. A thick, sweet smell comes up from the pulverized petals. “Not a one.”

“We didn’t _ask you to!”_

“Gentlemen,” Lanval cuts in, putting a firm gloved hand on Conrad’s shoulder. “This is really not the time.”

Conrad purses his lips and Worth blows out a pointed cloud of silver smoke, but they both silently agree to put the argument on hold. At least until things turn extremely dire.

“Now,” the dead man says, “I am fairly certain we’re currently located in the country of Svitz, whatever or wherever that might be. The important thing right now is that we locate Hanna, since he won’t be capable of moving much with his injuries.”

Worth rolls his eyes. “Ya wanna bet.”

“I suggest we carry on in the direction of those chimes,” the dead man goes on.

“What makes ya think he’s thata way?”

“Nothing, really,” the dead man admits. “I just want to know where the noise is coming from, because frankly it is driving me _crazy_.”

Conrad winces, but Worth looks like his night has been just about made. He makes a _lead the way_ gesture with his glowing cigarette, with a mocking little half-bow.

Lanval takes the lead with grace. He seems to know where he’s going, but Conrad is too pessimistic to really believe that. Lanval is always confident, even when he has no idea what’s going on. Conrad’s pretty sure he picked that up from Hanna.

Worth falls into step beside Conrad, and if he really thinks about it that makes him kind of mad. Here he is stalking along behind Lanval with his five-foot-six body and Worth is just—he’s just— _strolling_. Ugh. He’s got this dumb jacket on too, literally everything he owns has a fur lining. It kind of reminds Conrad of the dentist from Little Shop of Horrors, that leather jacket. Conrad tries not to think about Worth making pelvic gyrations while carving people’s teeth out, but the image is a little _too_ apropos for him to shake and he ends up stalking along even faster, trying to escape it.

He _will_ escape it. He just needs to speed up a bit more.

“Eh,” Worth says to him, keeping pace effortlessly, “slow down, enjoy the scenery. Pick out a nice hill fer us ter bury ya under when the sun comes up.”

“What makes you think the sun here ever comes up,” Conrad mutters into his scarf.

Worth looks up for a minute, genuinely contemplative. “Mebbe it don’t,” he admits. “Ya should getcherself a nice little summer house.”

“Oh, sure,” Conrad snipes. “I’ll just commute here every couple weeks, maybe there’s public transport, if you sign up now there’s a dollar discount on the _flying hell bus to another dimension_.”

“So yer too good fer the hellbus now?”

“And what if I am!”

Worth starts laughing. It’s wheezy and it’s got some phlegm in it, and it makes Conrad go absolutely red from head to fucking toe. His heart hasn’t beaten in months but he’s still got this inflated buzzing sensation that used to come along with a rapidly accelerating heart. He has no idea what to say now. The conversation (if you can call it that) is completely out from underneath his feet.

“Your jacket is awful,” he says, finally, tucking his chin further into his scarf. It’s red and it’s impressively soft and it’s a couple inches of cotton between Conrad and this whole fucked up evening.

“An’ ya look like a failed bandit from faggot country but ya don’t hear me complainin’.”

“I think I kind of _do_.”

Worth shrugs, like such details are below his concern. Conrad gnaws his lip until the skin splits.

“You should,” he starts, and then he bites down on the split lip so hard that it starts to leak black fluid, instead of just finishing the sentence.

Worth doesn’t say anything. He glances at Conrad with some vague expectation, but he doesn’t push for a reply when Conrad digs his head down into his chest and walks on.

_You should leave your office more often_ , he doesn’t say. It’s a stupid thing to say, he doesn’t even know why it tried to come out of his mouth. Like it’s any of _his_ business where Worth goes.

The rolling hills go on and on, and the chimes never seem to get any louder, and the moon stays huge and looming in the ashen sky above them. Conrad does his best to focus on the dead man walking ahead of him (gaining an inch or two of ground every few minutes, gradually becoming smaller, eventually poised to disappear distantly into the endless horizon) instead of the one beside him. He’s got to keep a tight grip on his brain, now is not the time to get all turned around in a self indulgent inner monologue.

His eyes keep slipping sideways to the fur lining of Worth’s jacket. It looks warm. Conrad isn’t particularly chilly, but he also doesn’t have a real jacket, and Worth does, and he imagines it must be worn thin on the lining and matted around the cuffs, and it would feel like wrapping up in some horribly ugly old blanket that used to belong to your grandmother, that it would be warm and huge on him if Worth pulled it off and offered—

Okay, seriously, what did he just say about a _tight grip_.

“Ya wanna say sommat, say it,” Worth tells him in a breath of steam and smoke.

This is the absolute _worst_.

“I just,” Conrad practically snarls into his scarf, “don’t understand why you’re so—why you’re so—”

“Debonair,” Worth suggests. “Ruggedly handsome. _Foxy._ ”

“Look,” Conrad says, “let’s just focus on finding Hanna, okay? I am not here so I can—”

But Worth is already distracted, shoving forward to catch up with Lanval, who has come to a halt at the gently curving top of a hill and appears to be inspecting something in the distance.

“—pretend like I like you,” Conrad finishes, faintly, just for the sake of anyone who might still be listening.

Down over the curve of the hill, come to find out, there’s a hell of a steep drop some ways away. The blue flowers grow thinner at the edge of it, a few huge leaves twisted into unnatural contortions where they spread too close to the drop. In the valley below there is the shadowy shell of what Conrad estimates was probably a monastery a hundred years ago. _Or yesterday_ , he amends darkly, shooting the bloated moon another uneasy glance.

“I’m not one to jump to conclusions,” Lanval announces, after a moment of contemplation, “but I think I’ll take something besides flowers as a good sign.”

“Do you hear that?” Conrad says, squinting into the dimness for all the good that's doing him. “The chimes, I mean. I don’t think they’re chimes.”

His companions pause, heads tilted, listening for the faint notes on the wind. The volume is the same as ever, now, but Conrad thinks he can hear vowels in the sound. Maybe even the hint of consonants. Someone is singing.

They skid down the side of the hill, half tumbling at times, past strange plants and stranger rocks, until they finally stumble to a stop at the standing stones that surround the abandoned monastery. Conrad brushes dirt from his pants, which are _completely ruined_ , he just knows it.

There’s a shadow in the doorway. As they move closer—Worth shoves Conrad ahead of him, Conrad squirms into a spot behind Lanval—the shadow takes on a decidedly feminine shape.

“ _Travelers_ ,” it sings, “ _come_ _and rest, we have rooms in the towers and sheets in the chests_.”

“Welcome to the hotel California,” Conrad mutters, taking hasty shuffling steps backwards toward the hill. From the looks of it, the thing will be a whole lot harder to scale than it was to slide down. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Conrad gets a foot up on the ledge with his stupid pointy shoes, why does he even bother really, he should just invest in some trainers, and he turns to offer whoever’s closest behind him a hand up. That would be a whopping nobody. Lanval is watching with some trepidation as Worth slides closer to the ruin like a metal shaving rolling towards a magnet. The doctor has this dopey awful expression on his face. All the lines on his forehead go soft, his mouth loses that nasty quirk, and Conrad hates it on sight.

“Hey!” he shouts, jumping down from his foothold, “Worth, where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Worth doesn’t even seem to notice him. Whatever he’s seeing—if it’s not what Conrad is seeing—it must be pretty fucking amazing.

“Doctor,” Lanval says, uneasily, “please reconsider your actions.”

Conrad drags his hands down his face, realizes his hands were covered in dirt and grass stains, regrets his entire life, and marches after Worth’s dreamily moving figure.

Worth is walking slowly, for him, so it isn’t hard for Conrad to catch him by the arm and swing him around. The man is tall, but he’s skinnier than a vegan buffet and the motion is practically effortless. Conrad catches the other arm in his free hand and holds him still, so Worth is staring blankly at a spot just above Conrad’s head.

“Worth,” he says. “Doc Worth. Hello, earth to quack.”

Nada. There’s a little weak pressure on Conrad’s hands, like the man is attempting to shake him free and failing.

“Worth come _on_ ,” Conrad pushes, growing a little panicked. “You know better, that woman probably wants to eat you or make you dance till your feet split open or something. We have to _go_ , we have to leave _now.”_

“Liv,” Worth says.

“Yes,” Conrad says, “ _exactly_ , we want to live, yes thank you. So let’s _go_.”

Worth doesn’t move. He’s still not making eye contact. Fuck this.

Conrad drops the doctor’s arms and grabs him by the grungy lapels and shakes him, fists making a wrinkled mess out of the cotton shirt. “Worth you useless son of a bitch,” he yells, “are you listening to me? Do you even give a damn?”

Conrad sees red. It’s an expression that doesn’t really mean anything, except that now it does—his vision is blurring and the sound of the one heartbeat in front of him is growing louder in his ears, and if red were a feeling in the pits of the eye sockets then this would be it. He’s not important enough, he’s _never_ important enough, and all he wants is for Worth to _give a damn_.

He shakes Worth hard enough that his neck snaps forward. Fine, fine, he’ll say it. “ _Doctor_ Worth,” he shouts, “do you want to find Hanna or not!”

Slowly, very slowly, Worth blinks.

Then he glances down at Conrad who’s still got him by the collar and glares, wrinkles his lip, reaches up and knocks Conrad’s hands away with more force than is really necessary. He’s scowling again. Conrad hates it on sight.

The taller man straightens his shirt. Behind them, the singing has stopped, and the doorway appears to be empty. The dead man—fuck, Conrad forgot about him—is watching the two of them with quiet bewilderment.

All three of them look around, reconsidering their positions—position, in the sense that they stand on unfamiliar ground, and position in the sense that they may not be in the company of the people they thought they were.

“Well what’re we fuckin’ around here fer,” Worth grunts, finally, pushing past Conrad. “C’mon, I reckon Hanna prolly got himself involved in somethin’ down the road there. Roit ominous this place, bound ter draw the guy like moths and fires.”

And he leaves. Like he always does. Never looking back to see if Conrad follows.


End file.
